where the light is
by mia gray
Summary: "I had an abortion." (future fic. no spoilers.)


"I had an abortion." Her voice is soft, choked. Pained.

Castle pales immediately, starts to back away from her on the couch. "_What?_"

And then she realizes what she's said, how it must sound.

She reaches out for him, trying to stop him from moving away, the words tripping over her tongue in her hurry to get them out, to explain.

"Oh god, Castle, not like that. No. No. Not now. Not – not _you_."

He stops moving away from her at that, seems to catch his breath.

"What?" he repeats, seemingly unable to say anything else.

Kate takes a deep breath, tries again.

"After my mom was killed," she swallows, keeps herself in check, "I went through some stuff."

Castle starts to move back towards her as she speaks, but stops short of touching her. He knows she needs her space when she talks like this, and she is so grateful for it, for all the ways he knows her.

It gives her strength, makes her more. Makes her want to let him in, even into the darkest places in her, in the very depths of her soul.

So she takes another deep breath and continues.

"That was probably an understatement." A wry smile crosses her lips as she looks down, busies her hands with picking imaginary lint off the couch.

"I had just turned twenty. It was about a year after my mother's murder. My dad was drinking. I was sort of lost. I didn't really treat myself with a whole lot of respect. Which is really saying something, since I hadn't really been doing that as a teenager anyway."

She sees Castle's hand twitch as he fights his instinct to reach for her and she decides to put him out of his misery, even if just for a second, so she reaches across to cover his hand with hers, squeezes lightly, and pulls back. He smiles softly at her for that, and she's once again overcome with how well they've come to know each other, how even the give and take has become.

Before she can become overwhelmed with that, she pushes on.

"Anyway, I was sleeping around a lot. Behaving recklessly. And then one day I realized I was late. Like, really late. At first I just figured it was stress, lack of nutrition, a product of all of the things I was and wasn't putting into my body."

She glances up at him to gauge his reaction, half expecting him to show some sort of disapproval, disgust even.

When she finds only that eagerness in his eyes that she sees whenever she shares some of herself with him, laced with sadness for her story, she continues, ridiculously relieved for it.

"Finally I had to admit to myself that I needed to take a test. So I went to the drug store and bought one. Which, by the way, was a particularly embarrassing experience. I was so nervous that I couldn't even play it off as someone who wanted the test to be positive."

He smiles softly at her. She takes another breath.

"Obviously, the test _was_ positive. I froze. Completely panicked. My dad was drunk somewhere, and I was home alone, staring at this plus sign and just completely floored. I was sick – literally. I was horrified and nauseous and so beyond sad that I didn't even know which way was up."

"Kate – " Castle starts to break in, clearly unable to hold himself back any longer.

She just shakes her head at him, her vision beginning to blur, silently begging him to just let her get it all out. He falls back, silent, and she continues.

"I didn't really have anyone then. Not my mom, obviously. Not my dad either at that point. Not even someone like Lanie. And, of course, no one like you. I had just completely alienated everyone in my life and I found myself trapped on this island, surrounded by nothing, anchored to no one. And all I could think was, if I can hardly keep myself together, how on earth am I going to raise a human? Standing in my childhood bathroom, I knew I couldn't do it. I didn't even know…" She hesitates, unsure if she really wants to give this much of herself away.

This is a story she's very intentionally never told a soul.

"Kate, it's okay," he cuts in, his voice soft, soothing. It buoys her, keeps her afloat against it all.

So she nods in agreement, a promise to continue, even as the motion becomes more of a bobbing up and down as she tries to put herself back together.

"I didn't even know who the father was," she finally manages to push out, the words clawing at her throat, making her feel raw. It's so embarrassing, this part, how she just let everything get away from her so suddenly, so terribly.

When he obediently stays silent, she continues.

"So I made an appointment. Dragged myself up and out three days later. Sat in the waiting room, surrounded by girls both much younger and somewhat older than I was, some clearly pregnant, others looking as desperate as I felt. I met with the obligatory counselor, who explained my options. I smiled politely at her, assured her that I knew what I wanted, that I was sure, and scheduled it for the following Tuesday."

She tilts her head back on the couch, staring unseeing at the ceiling.

"I went. Alone. Of course, you're not supposed to, so I lied, put on my bravest face, and convinced them that someone was waiting for me outside. It didn't take long." She clears her throat, blinks back the tears. "I left feeling emptier than I ever thought possible. To this day, I've never felt as utterly lost as I did then."

She feels his hand on her thigh, brushing lightly up and down, silently assuring her that he's listening, that he's there no matter what ugly truths she might reveal.

She finally looks back at him, tears now streaming unchecked down her face.

"When I met you and saw how you were with Alexis, found out what a great kid she was, it felt like a punch in the gut."

His hand stops and he pales again. "Kate – "

"Rick. Please."

He closes his mouth and nods at her to continue.

"I thought, if you were able to do it, why didn't I? How could I have been such a coward? And what would my son or daughter be like now? Would she be wonderful like Alexis? Would she have been doomed to follow in my self-destructive footsteps? Or could she have saved me from myself?"

Kate shakes her head, as though trying to force those thoughts out.

"It's not the same," Castle starts, his voice still pitched low.

She nods and continues.

"I know. I know. It's not the same. You were older, and you had money, and you at least thought you had another parent with you. But it still made me think."

She pauses, unsure of how exactly to continue this thread, unsure of how to connect it to the reason she started the story in the first place.

"You're a good man, Rick. An incredible father. It's the thing that made me stop and rethink my initial assumptions about you. The thing that made me re-examine the parts of me that I didn't so much want to think about, that I hadn't thought about in years."

"I'm not sure that's really a good thing," Castle cuts in again with what was probably meant to be a joke, but the roughness of his voice betrays him.

"It _was_ a good thing," she forces out, suddenly feeling defensive, protective of this, of him. "It is. Because it made me reconsider myself in the same way I reconsidered you. It made me realize that a person is more than one thing, more than just the most negative quality that they have or the worst decision they've made. Faced with all of the terrible people that had come in front of me, both the victims and killers who had made a string of bad decisions and had ultimately become only those bad things, I lost sight of the fact that not everyone becomes those things, that not everyone gets permanently lost."

She hesitates here, not sure she wants to speak her next truth out loud. But she reminds herself that this is Castle, and that she started this story for a reason. "I'm not even saying that I think I made the wrong decision. I don't. There are a lot of things I would go back and change if I could, but in light of those circumstances, that's not one of them. But it still felt like such a dead weight inside me, such a burden, that, piled against all the other dark parts, made me feel like I didn't have any light to offer."

Castle practically jumps off his seat at those words; she watches him physically hold himself down, listens to the words he's unable to stop from flying out of his mouth. "But I knew right away that wasn't true. I saw how beautiful you were, Kate. How beautiful you _are_." He says it with such conviction, such earnestness, that her eyes automatically shoot up to meet his.

She smiles at him for that, then ducks behind her hair to hide her blush.

"Thank you," she whispers. "And that's what you did for me. You pulled me up. You made me see light in the world, and then you made me see light in me. You did that."

He reaches for her then, clearly unable to hold himself back any longer, and draws her into his arms.

She goes willingly, lays her head softly on his shoulder.

"You have to know you did that for me, too, Kate. You do that for me everyday." She feels the words as well as hears them, and they give her strength to finish.

She pulls away, needing to look into his eyes for this.

"And now, we can do it together. This time – " she pauses, trying to get the words just right – "this time, I don't have to wonder. This time it feels so beautiful and right that I can hardly contain myself."

He freezes – literally completely stops moving, stops breathing – as he stares at her, trying to decipher her meaning.

"This time?" he finally squeaks out.

"Castle. I'm not sure this was really the best way to tell you, but I wanted you to know. I needed you to know that first."

"First?"

She smiles at him, a real one, her face splitting wide with it.

"First," she replies, nodding her head at him again. "Rick, we're going to have a baby."

His face clears immediately, his wide smile matching hers, spreading across his face, covering whatever confusion might have been there.

"A baby. We're having a baby?"

She nods, suddenly too choked up to form words. And then he's grabbing her, pulling her to him, practically dragging her into his lap. His arms are tight around her and she buries her head in his neck, breathes him in.

She feels him start to squirm beneath her and is about to protest when she feels his hand, solid and warm, sneaking under her shirt to brush softly against her stomach. She contorts herself enough to be able to do the same, to cover his hand with hers, and she sees her future spilling out in front of her, the scenes playing across her vision, the life she's built with Castle, the life they are building together.

"I love you," she whispers against him, smudging the words into his skin, sealing them with soft kisses.

He nudges her head with his, coaxing her from his shoulder, and presses his lips to hers.

They're both smiling so widely, so brightly, that the kiss is no more than the awkward clashing of their teeth.

It's the best kiss she's ever had.


End file.
